As the credits have rolled on the first episode of the new FX series Alien: earthI was shocked by how much I appreciated. Apart from the first two films, Stranger And AlienThe heritage of the revolutionary science fiction series has been divisor to say the least. When I saw that Noah Hawley, who also developed television adaptations of Fargo And created the X-Men series LegionWas credited for having produced and written the series, I knew we are all in good hands.
I abandoned another good Stranger Film a long time ago. As a rule, I’m not a fan of extending something in a franchise when a story feels over. Stranger was his own complete story – the one that made a gesture in a broader world, but a story with a start, an environment and an end. It is extraordinarily lucky that Alien is also an incredible film, although a action film rather than a compact science fiction thriller. But after these two successes, there have been a series of failures and half-displays, and some outright abominations (Alien vs predator).
As much as I personally appreciate a film like Alien: AllianceIt is an objective truth that even the return of director Ridley Scott could not bring back the magic of this first Stranger movie. As much as I like Alien: RomulusIt is also based on nostalgia for the past rather than creating new places so that the story takes place. This is not the case with Alien: earthwhich has two episodes in streaming on Hulu at the moment. I think that a large part of this is Noah Hawley.
The first show written by Hawley I watched was Legionwhich is an adaptation of X-Mensomehow. He follows David Haller, a mutant in a psychiatric hospital who later learns that things he thought was a mental illness was in fact his mutant powers manifested. Although the show becomes more unequal, the more it happens, it is always ambitious and visually adventurous. Instead of putting a hand on his temple and eyes, Haller’s psychic powers are described as dance musical sequences, Bollywood musical sequences, and at one point, a duet between him and his enemy of the song “Behind Blue Eyes”.
Legion Participates in capturing aspects of X-Men culture and mutant that exist in comics that never presents themselves in films: the mutants are discriminated against, and therefore many of them find themselves in the lie of society. What would it feel to have potentially modifying power in the world, but also to be in the grip of drug addiction? Likewise, Hawley Fargo The show is more than a series of crime stories. He tries to grasp the tone, and especially the humor, of the film of the Coen brothers without ringing points of the plot too closely.
It is the great strength of Alien: earth. It is not only another cat and mouse game with the infamous xenomorphic – although there is still a lot of suspense centered around the place where the xenomorph is located and where it will go. Like the original film, it is also a question of knowing how megacorporations like the fictitious Weyland Yutani treat its workers as consumable in their quest to learn the secrets of the immortality of the indestructible xenomorph. In a way, the xenomorph itself becomes a literary of the extractive nature of capitalism: it takes people and the hollows of the interior, all at the service of reproduction. All entries in the Stranger The franchise I appreciate made this tension part of their stories.
A large part of the first episode of Alien: earth Concerns a new Megacorp, Prodigy, which experiences the transfer of consciousness of children with terminal phase in adult synthetic bodies. These syntheses have children’s minds, but they are in adult bodies, leading to fun choices with these adult actors trying to describe that mentally, these characters are all intended for the time or twelve. Due to the secret surrounding this new technology, Prodigy does not allow these synthetics to return to their families again. The first child transferred to an adult synthetic body, Wendy, is authorized to see his brother, but only from a distance, looking at him through view screens but has never authorized to contact him.
In the first episode, a space crafts crash into a skyscraper, and Wendy looks at her brother to embark on action as the first respondent. Wendy speaks to her manager to allow her and her synthetic colleagues to help save people and do some business spying on the side. Of course, of course! – There is a xenomorph on this same ship. And the Howdy boy does it love to tear people.
More than the fascinating mysteries that Hawley sets up in his first two episodes – the circumstances of the way in which the Xenomorph freed himself from confinement on a space ship, which led it to a populated city, are so far not revealed –Alien: earth is beautiful to look at. The camera swings and stops in the narrow corridors, picking up the speed as if it were on a roller coaster. There are details packed in each setting, things moving behind people’s heads as they examine the accident, something rushing in the background while they turn around every corner. The most impressive for me are the use by the Sweet bland show to switch from one shot to another, superimposing images on each other in a collage. All of this seems thoughtful and considered, a program that you cannot watch by looking at your phone.
For a long time, I never wanted an entry into the Stranger series where the xenomorph arrives on earth. Hell, I thought that most of the entries where the xenomorph is in space were cheap cash seizures that rested on nostalgia – a xenomorph on earth felt creative in bankruptcy, as if the series scratched at the bottom of the barrel to win back the fans. After watching two episodes of Alien: earth I am corrected. There is something interesting in the idea that a society unleashes something so fatal about humanity, only to watch their plans get in flames.
